I’m sure when I first set up JMC summer was a quiet time. Not this year, it seems. New cartoon commissions and projects are not taking a break whilst people take their summer holidays. Which, from my point of view, is great! Here are some of this month’s highlights – as usual there’s quite a variety of topics.
The US continues to be a rich seam of material to be mined and processed into cartoons. There are no heroes, everyone’s a flawed character and no-one is safe… That could be the White House, but could equally be Game of Thrones, which returned this month and works well as inspiration in conjunction with real-life politics.
Closer to home, the BBC’s gender pay gap was a dominant story for several news cycles, generating more than a few cartoons. Sticking with the BBC, the announcement was made about the new lead in Doctor Who, which provoked much discussion and demonstrated that women are clearly more terrifying than Daleks to some of the show’s avid fans.
On a more serious note, this month was also the 100th anniversary of Third Ypres or Passchendaele. Cartoons still have a role to play in life or death matters. Think of the black humour of the cartoons created at the time. E. H. Shepard (of Winnie the Pooh fame) continued to submit cartoons to Punch whilst serving in Flanders!
I hope you enjoy this month’s selection. I will be away myself for the beginning of August, but if you’d like to commission a project – whether it’s set of cartoons for an event or publication, or a single picture to support a blog post – please send me a message and I’ll contact you on my return.
James.
